


Painted By Numbers

by honeymink



Category: Skins (UK), Skins (US)
Genre: F/F, Gen, M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2012-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:58:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeymink/pseuds/honeymink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time goes by, hits her so suddenly...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Painted By Numbers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alerie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alerie/gifts).



Between tick and tack of the clock, Jal did not expect a miracle or an accident, until he said they would come. Advancing, approaching relentlessly for it was New Year’s Eve.

“Come on, it’s not like you had plans to set the Thames on fire,” Tony had her sussed out. “Maxxie’s got the spliff. Anwar and I will pick up some pills and booze on the way over. It’ll be downhill all the way.” 

“Brilliant. Let’s rake over the fucking ashes then, shall we?” Jal shouted into her mobile but he had already rung off. 

Furious, she disassembled and cleaned her clarinet. Roughly two hours on the M4 – Bristol to East Hoxton. Perhaps they should tidy the flat a bit. It was moments like this when she really had it in for him. Tony and his compelling arguments, made suavely, fast-talking in bullet points as if he still had them all at his disposal.

“Oh wow, all the long gone darlings,” Cassie smiled brightly. “It’ll be lovely!”

Something monstrous made of sponge, custard and glitter sat between them on the kitchen table. It had been a good arrangement mostly. Cassie decorated cakes at some bohemian little bakery around the corner, Jal attended the 'Royal Academy of Music', they never talked about Chris. Not how Cassie had found him dying in his own blood and vomit, not how Jal had the abortion and there was nothing tangible of him left. 

“Oh, fuck it!” said Jal, but wondered what made Tony force this reunion now. 

“Do we make punch? Like we get some fruit, booze, ice, umbrellas, punch bowl, add some mixers. But not too much,“ Cassie chattered busily. “And then we put in Covonia and all the worries feel lighter. Yeah?”

Jal looked out through the window, where the earth was shrouded in black, where the rain bounced off dirty tiles.

“Right, Cass,” she replied, doubtful. “Gotta dress first.”

***

“So theoretically, when you are single and so is… you know… the other guy,” Maxxie dithered nervously. “And if I lost my head and he gave me head, that would be okay, right? Although before it wasn’t because… you know…”

Waiting for the others to arrive, they lounged on the couch, a bit uneasy, passing the first joint around. 

“Chelle’s shagging her English lit prof in York,” Jal informed him dryly. “Doubt she’s gonna make it.”

“Wow, Maxxie, you’re all horny!” Cassie said wide-eyed, handing over the fag.

Shaking, he took the last drag and skinned another one. “You can tell?”

“Yeah. Just why would you go there anyway?” Jal asked. “You said he really sucked at… sucking.”

Sinking deeper into the couch, Maxxie fiddled with the lighter. Finally he got the spliff glowing and inhaled deeply.

“So I got upset and lied. I didn’t mean anything, just didn’t want to be toyed with, okay? Then Michelle was angry, called me a dirty slut. And you know what a cocky bastard he was before… you know… anyway,” he tried to change the subject. “You look beautiful, Cassie. Is Sid –“ 

“No. We keep missing each other,” she said, perhaps a bit sadly. “I hope Tony brings some good pills.”

Outside in the street a car door slammed and voices came near. Incoherent scraps of talk and high heels clicking up the walk. Jal shook her head in despair as she got up to open the door.

“Cheers, Jal!” Tony grinned all smug. “Thanks for generously offering your place.”

“Nice one, Tone. Pull the other one,” she narrowed her eyes, irritated.

“Ease off! You’ll be mentioned in the dispatches,” he smirked, squeezing past her into the flat. “One could get the impression you’re not happy to see us.”

“No, I’m delighted,” she replied sarcastically and turned around. “Hello Anwar.”

“Well fuck me senseless! Exquisite dress there, Jal. Flaunting your knockers properly, eh?“ he laughed like a drain, giving Kenneth a high-five. 

“Bash, bashy yo brown bwoy! Sista got ah sey won nungas, makdem’s white trombone blowers cream up their pussies ‘n ting good style!”

“What?” Jal slapped the back of Kenneth’s head. “Tony, for fuck’s sake –“

“Oh yeah, this is Tabitha,” Tony introduced the short blonde. “She’s from the U.S. and has no more than ninepence in the shilling. Right, babe?”

“Mambo! You’re way way hot!” she swooned at Tony dreamily then leaned into Jal. “My ‘rents stay at the Dorchester and Tony said we’re going to get so amoral after we smack it down, yeah?!” 

“I see you’re still putting yourself about, Tony,” Jal yelled after him as she closed the door and followed everyone into the living room. 

The dull drums of her pulse beat against the noise of people meeting, the laughter and the screams. Finally everyone had found a seat and a mug of punch; pills and spliff lay on the coffee table.

“Didn’t know this was going to be an ABC party.” 

Maxxie stared sourly at Tabitha who sat on Tony’s lap wearing some type of snug jumpsuit with the shortest shorts and neckline down to her pierced navel.

“Well, it wasn’t but why not. Unless you lot turned into a bunch of pussies. Strip poker, then?” Tony said provocatively and raised an eyebrow.

Anwar almost pissed himself laughing. “But Kenneth can’t play for nuts!”

“Ya stop given mi gyp. Raas blood, K teach wutless browning reespek, ya hear!”

“Keep your pecker up, Kenneth,” Tony appeased him with a sly smile. “He’s just teasing.”

Maxxie downed a handful of pills with more punch.

“Now, that’s something you’d know all about, Tony, right? Like this morning when you rang to tell me you bat for both sides and shit.” 

“So you're not gonna gay me then? Shame!” Tony smirked at having him so riled up.

“Wow, Jal did you ever realise,” Cassie interrupted, laughing in fits, high as a kite. “Our velvet pillows are the colour of blood pudding. And the white china has flying fish from Italy. Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.“

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Jal shouted, annoyed and she did like Maxxie: punch and pills, the mixture as before. “Cass, you get a deck of cards. Tony, we have a word. Now!”

***

In the bedroom, Jal didn’t shy away from confrontation.

“Why are we here, Tony? If you wanted to have it away with Maxxie, why did you bring the elite baby prostitute from the bloody 'Edith Damp Collegiate for Young Ladies'? And after all, why now? Don’t you have new friends you can order around?” 

Upon his lips a hopeless smile, Tony sat down on the bed and looked bruised all over, but still whole.

“It’s Effy,” he said simply. “Her world has lost control and it’s my fault. She had to see it all, and she took care of me, used to read to me when I woke up screaming. But I wasn’t there to do the same for her.”

Months after the accident, when his memories came back, Jal recalled seeing shame on his face for the first time. Shame about how he treated Michelle and really, all of them at one time or another. Guilt, however, was new. It couldn’t be denied, what he said was true. Jal had only heard bits and pieces of the story where three people were bludgeoned, two of them Effy’s boyfriends. What was a horrible story to her, was a heavy chain to him he couldn’t tear loose from.

“So where were you?” Jal asked and Tony looked down on the floor away from her.

“Uni, Cardiff, the East Coast – because I’m a bloody wanker. I told her once, she couldn’t fool me but the truth is she could and she did because I wanted to believe that she was fine.”

Finally she sat down next to him on the bed, patting his knee. In a way, she thought, this wasn’t so different from her and Chris. Neglectful, caught up in one’s own secret. Maybe not wanting them to know. Maybe not wanting to know. Because it might be something that would fall like a house in flames. 

“You’ll go back after tonight and stay with her, right?!” Jal demanded harshly, pushing any thought of Chris away. “You are done being a coward, you hear me!”

He nodded and they sat there in silence.

“So,” he said after a while. “What makes you so angry?”

In the morning when she got his call, fear had crept up from dark corners that every time she would see their friends, there would be one less. But she wasn’t going to tell him that.

“Nothing,” she lied. “So we are going back out there and you’ll stop being such a prick to Maxxie. And when you two get your end away, it’ll be on the bloody washer. You stay out of our fucking bed! Is that clear?”

“Crystal!” Tony grinned. “Its fine linen are solely reserved for you, Cass and the power of the pussy…” 

For some reason he seemed to have expected a slap on the back of his head. But instead Jal just got up. It would be midnight soon.

“I need more punch if Cassie and I are to hold Tabitha’s hair back once she pukes,” she rolled her eyes. “You owe me for this, Tone!”

“Yeah. About that punch…” he grimaced slightly.

“Covonia,” Jal replied and exhaled sharply. “Don’t ask!”

 

**~Fin~**


End file.
